"But he gave me the key and I went to my work. I thought once I would have to open the door and I stuck the key in the lock. It was a funny key.
"But I didn't need to open the door. I took my dinner along--she could tell you that. But I didn't need to open the door, and I took the key out again and put it in my pocket, and when I finished I swept everything up nice and locked the church door and came down the pike. It was night already and I went to the preacher and gave him the two keys, the church key and the other, and got my money. That quick he paid me, Alvin. He said to me, 'Well, I guess you had a quiet day, William,' and I said, 'Yes, nobody looked in at me but a little one.' That is what I said to the preacher _then_, Alvin, exactly that, but it was not true. But I thought it was true.
"Then I came home and I told her how nice and smooth I had made it--to this day, you cannot see it was a window there. Now, listen, Alvin!"
The sunset sky was darkening, a rising wind rattled the door in its latch. The little house was lonely on a winter night, even a bright night like this. The boy began to be frightened, his father looked at him with such dagger-like keenness.
"So it went for three weeks, Alvin, and then it was Sunday morning and here I sat and there she sat and you were running round, and it came a knock at the door and there was the preacher. I was studying my lesson for the Sunday School. It was about Ananias. I had learned the answers and the Golden Text, but it was not yet time to go. I always went to church; I liked to go to church. Then there came this knocking, Alvin, and it was the preacher. I thought perhaps he had come to give her the communion while she wasn't very well and couldn't go down through the snow. The preacher came in and he looked at me.
"'William,' said the preacher to me, 'do you remember how I gave you the key to the cupboard when you fixed the wall?'
"'William,' said he to me, 'did you open the cupboard?'
"'Why, no,' I said. 'I didn't have to, Para [Pastor].'
"'No,' I said. 'I took my dinner. She can tell you that.'
"'Why, William,' said he to me, 'the communion set is gone! The communion set is gone,' he said, 'gone!'
"I went with him to the church, Alvin, and I looked into the cupboard. Everything was gone, Alvin, bag and all. Then I came home and after a while they came. They wanted to talk, they wanted me to tell them everything that had happened all day. But I couldn't tell them anything. I had built the wall and a little one had talked to me, that was all. There she sat and here I sat and it was dark. Then, Alvin, it came to me! When I got halfway up the window, it was too high to go farther, and I went out of the church to get boards and build a platform across chairs so that I could reach. I was gone some little time, and when I came back Hartman was going down the pike. It was Hartman that took the communion set."